Driving out of Santa Fe, we’d expected to hit a gas station, but instead found ourselves on another endless stretch of desert with the needle nosing towards empty. Neither of our phones had a signal, so we wound up stopping in a small town called Madrid to ask where the nearest station was.

At this point, several nights of incomplete sleep cycles had left me decidedly short of cheerful, but my crankiness waned as we walked through Madrid. This was exactly the sort of place that inspired me to take roadtrips in the first place: although we soon learned that Madrid was home to only about 300 people, the main street was stuffed with colorful galleries, restaurants, and jewelry shops. We talked to one gallery owner who said she’d stopped in Madrid (firmly pronounced MAD-rid by the locals) in the 80’s and bought property there within the week. The jewelry salesman showed us his collection of cerrillos turquoise, a soft, aqua-tinted variety that had a smoky quality when unfinished. Everyone told us we had to go to Harvey the chocolate maker, whose generous samples and Wonka-esque wackiness lived up to their reputation. When we stopped in the bar to ask about a gas station, two day-drinking locals kindly offered to proffer gas cans from their own homes.

Instead, we managed to make it to the nearest station, which wasn’t far from our campground in Turquoise Trails. We settled in for a peaceful evening, pitching our tent under some low juniper trees that emitted a soft crackling sound through the night.

We also befriended the campground cat, whose loyalty was cemented when I helped him fish a dead bird out of our grill.

Unfortunately, he also took it personally when we retired inside our tent, and decided to get our attention by jumping on top of it. I couldn’t stop laughing, but Sean was less than amused by the twenty claws coming through our recently repaired rain fly. (By the end of this trip, I suspect the whole thing will be made of weatherproofing tape.)

When we finally made it to Phoenix, our first stop was Sean’s aunt and uncle’s house, where we also found his cousin and her three kids. The five of us adults chatted over some much-needed ice water while we watched the big-screen TV that was the window onto the backyard pool, where the kids were by turns splashing manically through the water and jumping up on land to wave shyly at us.

Once the sun went down and it went from being brutally hot to just horrendously hot, we all took a walk around the neighborhood while the kids rode their bikes. Sean opted for a more rigorous exercise routine, which mostly involved giving endless piggybacks to everyone under 10.

We also met up with Sean’s cousin from the other side of the family, who’d moved to Phoenix from Connecticut about a year ago. We were going to check out her friend’s concert at some cool dive bar downtown, but at the last minute we remembered that we’re old and broke, so instead we caught up over salads and craft beers in her kitchen the next day.

These family visits pretty much concluded our adventures in Phoenix, since it was too hot to explore anything that required leaving air conditioning. (I don’t know what the logistics are of connecting the entire city by underground tunnels, but it’s something Phoenix should maybe look into.) We set off for San Diego, our jumping-off point for the Mexican leg of our trip.

Fortunately, this drive offered a little more variety in scenery than the last few days. Rolling hills gave way to sandy desert, which morphed back into towering clay-red mesas. Once or twice we even drove through wind farms, which felt like being an ant in some Seussian garden, the long white blades swinging with the mesmerizing grace of something very large moving very swiftly.

After a night in San Diego, we’ll start heading down the Baja Peninsula to where my dad lives on a 30-foot Westsail in La Paz. Hasta luego, Estados!